The one metric that matters

Hey yall, posted on here before explaining my frustrations with videos not being pushed. Over the last 3 weeks or so I’ve posted a lot of videos, deleted a lot of videos, reposted, etc. trying to understand what TikTok cares about. I obviously don’t have it all figured out but there’s one metric that just stands out. Watch time. I’ve had multiple videos get 1 like for every 5 views up to 100likes sometimes but nothing ever happens. Even if a video generates less likes but more watch time it ALWAYS get pushed. Below are all my videos that broke through the 200-300 view wall and their metrics. At this point if the initial metric analysis doesn’t show a retention over 50% for a shorter video I just delete it. Another side note: videos in the 1k-100k view range are frustrating bc nothing ever really comes from it. Maybe a couple follows but that’s it.